It ends like this:  

Your eyes are dry and your mouth is empty because words that sculpture themselves into apologies like twisted metal figurines don’t fit. He holds his palms out flat, all that he is and you are with him exposed bare and pink and raw and everything and it just isn’t enough. You think somewhere vacantly that it should be, but you’ve learned from experience that just because there’s no one to blame it doesn’t mean you’re happy or that the situation is flawless. He’s everything to you and you’re everything to him, but there’s something in the space between that doesn’t fit. Maybe if…  

It’s no one’s fault which makes this so much harder.  

*   

You think that there’s a moment for most people when they realize that their lives aren’t going to be like in the movies, where everything goes black and happily ever after has a period at the end. Like it’ll all be as simple as that.   

But your life had been a series of question marks. Of dot dot dots that lead the white space and then…  

Nothing.   

*  

You think that somewhere along the way you must have been broken.   

You’ve been checking and checking and you don’t see the crack but there’s a seeping in your gut that nags at you, tells you that you need to be fixed because every day a drop of you spills out, onto the New York pavement and fizzles away. It’s summer in the city which means you’re half a degree above boiling but somewhere there’s something that’s always cold and tired and you keep sipping whiskey but it doesn’t seem to help.   

But you aren’t scared, never scared. Yet you almost wish.   

*  

There are long fingered shadows that stretch onward, towards the cars and the streets and the buildings across the way, and maybe if they kept on they would point the way towards home because it’s not here or there or the shabby little apartment or the empty childhood home because parents move on too. But that doesn’t quite make any sense, if you think on it.  

It’s late and you’re cold and you’ve been here before but you’re just too tired tired to remember why, beyond that the outcome last time had been disastrous in the worst kind of way because you’re pretty sure it was all you’re fault. But you can’t really believe that because there had been two of you and it takes two to do most things of value. Except live or love and even though most people would consider that enough you know from experience it’s not. But there are two of you now, you and him, but a different him from last time and maybe it’ll make the difference. Maybe he can fill in those gaps that you know are there. You almost want to ask if it’s possible, but that seems like an odd question because you don’t know him that well under scrutiny. But he smiles that cautious way of his and you let yourself believe you can be whole again.   

Yes.   

Pieces are making you motion sick.  

*  

He visits here sometimes, with his scuffled steps and his downy hair and a sad expression that manages not to impose. Most people don’t realize he’s there (for some menial paperwork you’re sure) and you wouldn’t know either if you hadn’t become accustomed to his presence back in that town you pretend not to remember the name of. But you shiver sometimes and he’s there, asking you if you want to go to lunch because by all accounts it should be familiar, and you wonder if this is what being haunted feels like.   

You walk the drab halls of the office and notice he barely casts a shadow.  

*  

Her skirt feels like teetering on the edge of a cliff and you’re just trying to map out exactly how nouns evolve into verbs in your head so easily, but then you’re spiraling down down down…  

Karen tastes like marzipan.   

*  

You think there must be something about her. She’s got that glow, like the cast of firelight on fallen snow and you’re just freezing out here all alone.   

But if you think that then there must be something that you don’t have, some chink in the chain that he had but you’re missing, something that made her see right through you and back to him. You were here all along and yet she was always skipping away from you.   

There’s a fuzzy yellow duck on your nightstand that says so.   

* 

Somewhere there are fates laughing because you’d piddled away pennies to jump a train and pretend like it was spontaneous, only to be crouched on this stool with salt on your thumbs and lime under your nails and pretending the burn in your cheeks is from the alcohol.   

This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.   

Once loose ends are tied they’re supposed to stay knotted, not slip out and let the memories or guilt slither to the floor. But she was here (because that’s how your life had been going lately and it isn’t like she would have ended up in the endless other bars in the city), so you smile and pretend like there wasn’t all this awful ugliness between you not so long ago.   

“I don’t think I ever really hated you,” and she says it like she’s deciding on brands of bread, “I think I just couldn’t let myself hate him.”  

You swallow and since apparently this is the night for epiphanies, “Me too.”  

You both sit there with heavy fingers on your eyelids and neither of you say his name.   

*  

At first you like the new girl because she’s right angles and tailored suits and distracting enough to keep Jim’s eyes away from reception. But then you hate her because it draws attention to his lanky limbs and floppy hair and you know that she notices. She’s jealous. And it shouldn’t hurt like you’re heart is turning to dust and your feet have cement tethered to them like in old mafia movies where the film is grainy and they all have silly Italian nicknames like Big Tony, but it does. So you lose her paperwork and you never lapse into small talk with her during social events and you think she doesn’t notice but she does so it’s slightly jarring during that stupid fiesta party that she kisses you.   

There’s a transfer from the tears wetting her cheeks to yours, which isn’t fair because you’ve tried so hard for so long to force a drought. But you know she isn’t thinking in metaphors as she grasps your belt.   

You still her hand.  

“You don’t care, right?”   

And it seems like an odd thing for her to say considering the situation but from the vacant expression in her eyes you get the impression that she isn’t actually talking to you.   

You nod and it feels like the wrong answer.   

*  

You don’t ask her why she left her cozy village with the scruffy haired boy who stole both of your hearts (but most of the time you don’t think of it like that).  

She leans into you on the cab ride home, her breath hot and sticky on your neck and you’re trying to figure out if it’s really as freezing outside as you think because you swear you can see fog curling from between her lips in one continuous funnel. Your eyebrows raise to form a twisty question mark and she shrugs.  

“You want me and that should be enough.”  

It feels like a tired excuse, like she’s used it before, but you still hope she’s right.  

*  

There’s a weak drink in your hand and it’s far too crowded in here to be doing this and there’s more glass around you than you remember and this feels a lot like last time. Only it’s slightly more awkward because Roy hadn’t kissed Jim too (or at least you don’t think) and it didn’t feel like you should be reclining in a love seat and paying him a hundred dollars an hour. But, just like last time there are words that have been hiccupped back into your gut so many times they have bruises from the almost-contact with the air and spewing seems like an accurate verb for once. Just say it. Ready, set, go (I’ll race you to the finish line).  

“I kissed Karen.”  

“Oh” is all you get in reply and there are so many emotions infused into that one syllable that you’re sure you could start a practice just pulling them apart.   

“Oh” and suddenly you’re the glass because you can’t bring yourself to do more than reflect it back to him.  

*  

You’re so sure this is what you want that you’re neck strains to keep all this uneasiness inside, from shimmying out your throat and curling into blatant creatures on the carpet so that every one will point and know you don’t think you belong. But you do: there are plaques on your wall and a wide wooden desk and a picture window and a sign on your door and Gucci wrapping around your toes that say so. The shiny black buttons on your new pants suit match the official-looking black phone beside your stark computer screen and that has to mean something, mean that this is…  

Your chair spins and you open your eyes to the view and when all you see is blue the shade isn’t as vivid as you would have imagined.   

*  

There’s always been something about anticipation, how it belays the real value of things like love and loss and death (you’re only missing experience with that last one) that causes you to veer away from the sensation at all turns. There’s a comparison to movie previews on you’re lips and how the actual film is never as good as you’d think but it dies an untimely death there because that’s really more about editing and Hollywood studios.   

But you can’t cut this out, can’t splice the film in your memory of her avoiding your eyes as she sits across from you at that round table that made you feel inadequate to a knight because heroes fix their marriages, or the precision with which her signature is cut into the document, reminding you too much of surgery because you can feel the blade in your heart. But then the same pen is gripped in your own hand (you try not to notice that it’s still warm from where her fingers just were) and you press harder than you have to.   

You dig your feet into the sand, for the shelter and to feel the grain against your skin. It isn’t what you really want because it’s January on the beach and the ocean spray is forcing this dampness deeper, but it’s close enough.  

You hadn’t really expected anything more.   

*  

It begins like this:  

You’re escaping before the sun wakes up and its light triggers the fear and the apprehension. Before you have the chance to rethink the small suitcase in the backseat that doesn’t hold the weight of any memories or the sureness of your hands gripping the wheel. Your lips are murmuring proverbs about hope and doors and windows (but that one makes you wonder if both can never be open at the same time which seems unfair) because maybe abstract ideas that you’ve only known in theory won’t make this hurt as much.   

There are signs for Scranton in your rearview mirrors and the reflection brings a small sigh to whisper at back of your teeth. Your cheeks puff into a rigid expression and you’re glad you’re alone for no one to see this grimace that you’re optimistic will someday be a smile.  

But this, the pressure of your foot on the gas, is why you will survive.